OM88.  

Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli at St John's College Chapel, Cambridge.

The Choral setting of Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli (c.1562) at St John's College yesterday evening was so extraordinary that I have had to take several hours to think about what to say about it. This was the first performance by St John's new Director of Music, Christopher Gray, who has just completed 20 years at Truro cathedral and is well known for the integration of girls and young women into the choir at Truro, a choir that will emigrate to London to sing at the King Charle III's Coronation on 6th May where it will be under the Westminster Abbey Director of Music Anrdew Netsingha, who was, until December last year, Director of Music at St John's College.

This Palestrina Mass is a major work, and has been regularly sung at the coronations of Pontiffs.  The service started with a strong baritone solo voice singing the Introit for the day, as the choir and clergy processed into the chapel and took their places in the choir stalls; a single voice which in memory contrasted with the rich polyphony which followed. I counted the choir and they numbered 39.

The number of voice parts vary throughout Palestrina's mass, but the Kyrie at the start embraced the maximum number of seven to be found in this Mass, and Christopher Gray seems to have given special attention to this, the first choral piece in the Mass, doubtless on the basis that this is the first thing the congregation hears, and it will warm the rest of the performance if done successfully. It was also the first manifestation of the Choir under his direction. The choir sang the Kyrie and its beautifully textured, complex polyphony brought performance at St John/s to a grand level of perfection. The other movements of the Mass followed effortlessly and at times the music can only be described as ecstatic, as indeed it should be -- for this was a Eucharist and, as Dean Oakley loves to say, this is Church music sung in the liturgical context for which it was composed.

The Gloria was especially inspiring although sometimes the Latin words were not easy to distinguish. Interestingly enough that was an important ecclesiological matter for this particular piece of music and for Palestrina himself.  This work was written at around the time of the Council of Trent as the Church collected itself after the schism with Protestantism and certain senior clergy were objecting to polyphony and wanted to ban it in the Catholic Church on the grounds that it reduced the importance of the liturgy because the words could not be heard. They wanted more plainsong. Palestrina used this mass to demonstrate that polyphony could be complex whilst the liturgy itself was not lost. Fortunately for the next five hundred years of Church music, Palestrina's music triumphed and polyphony was not done away with.

As my wife Josephine commented, Christopher Gray seemed to liberate the choir which sang with great freedom and, at times, with impressive volume. This was difficult, complex but wonderful music.The work ended with the contemplative beauty of the Agnus Dei. 

St John's College Chapel is indeed blessed!



Spring in Cambridge with the "Wedding Cake" the spire of St John's College Cambridge's New Court in the distance. The construction of New Court nearly bankrupted the college in the mid-19th Century.







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